Challenge me
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Ever wondered how did Inui and Tezuka become childhood friends?


**Fandom: Prince of Tennis / Tennis no Oujisama  
Title: Challenge me.  
Pairing: Tezuka + Inui  
Description: Ever wondered how did Inui and Tezuka become childhood friends?**

**Disclaimer: Tennis no Oujisama wa Yui no koto ga arimasen.  
**

I have nothing but respect for you.  
And I constantly change when I'm around you.

But even though you shouldn't, why do you always look back while I'm chasing after you?

**Challenge me.  
By miyamoto yui**

"You're back again?" a tall kid mockingly asked as he rolled his eyes at me. He sighed impatiently while tightening his grip over his racket. Putting it over his shoulder, he shook his head. "Why do you even come here?"

The other people of this small little crowd jeered at me. I just gave them a blank look, unfazed by their childishness. "I'm here to play tennis of course."

It was meddlesome to waste my breath on such an obvious answer; however, they didn't seem to think so. I just continued to blink my eyes indifferently.

If I showed any kind of weakness, then it was the end.

That was how bullies worked, or so I had researched. But if you showed that you weren't going to take their superfluous utterances, then you had to protest against them tactfully. That was the only way to survive. Besides, why would I have wanted to get unnecessarily injured with no just reason?

The tall one pushed my shoulder with his left hand. "You know what? You suck. Don't know why you come back to show us how much you suck."

Looking back on this recollection, I find that I only felt slightly damaged by such a comment. If I wasn't used to this, then maybe I would have wailed like I did back when I was much smaller. But I knew something that they didn't. (Okay, so I knew many things that these foolish kids didn't know.)

I didn't even say anything. I no longer wanted to waste my breath on someone who didn't matter. And so, I pushed through the crowd in order to get to the tennis courts.  
The tall one, having his pride and reputation on the line, stomped towards me and took up my collar. He dropped his racket and it clattered to the ground as if a bomb had been set off. His dark-brown eyes stared into mine with such hate that I couldn't understand what was the stem of such an emotion.

Later, though, I had learned that it was precisely called "envy".  
How people could act so irrationally with such jealousy within them…

I later learned that lesson quite well.

"Why do you play, you weakling?!" he shouted at me while shaking me.

I sighed as I looked into his eyes with all of my determination. "Because I love tennis. That's all."

With that, he let go of me and laughed. I wiped his imaginary mark on my collar and pulled on my shirt to loosen myself up. Then, they left me, but not without a challenge. "We'll let you go for today, but if you want to play in this park ever again, you'll have to defeat me."

Then, they all laughed with the tall one shouting as a final insult, "Guess I won't see you for a long time! Ahahaha!"

If people ever said that adults had such candor as to totally obliterate a person's fighting spirit, I would beg to differ. I think that children, having not experienced the world, are much more sadistic. Without the ability to complicate their feelings or plans, they can say whatever they want. And because they are children, adults think that these words can be dismissed simply because of this inexperience.  
I don't believe that is the case at hand. Instead, children are more hurtful _because_ they have to learn everything at the same time and don't know how to deal with it. Not that adults are any better, but there is something called "filtering" when you grow up.

On that day, I didn't know what filtering meant, but I felt it. I felt it when someone in back of me had said, "I love tennis too."

Suddenly, I turned around to find a boy with thin-rimmed glasses on the top of the cement steps. I blinked my eyes, having always thought that I was one that never stood out in the crowd, to find that someone had noticed me. Someone had listened to what I said.

He walked over to me with his racket over his shoulder and a small smile on his lips. He held out his hand. I immediately noticed that it was his left one. "Want to have a match?"

Before I could assess anything, I found myself gripping onto his firm hand and answering, "Yes. Sounds like fun."

When we played, I was really happy. I felt challenged, but maybe I could see the difference because he loved to play the game itself instead of stopping to always show off his skills. Yes, it was quite a different experience than playing by myself or playing with people that didn't want to truly play with all their heart.

And as we played one another, I didn't know why, but I didn't feel the need to ask him.

When we were finished, we smiled at one another while huffing and puffing. We went over to a water fountain and drank. Then, we plopped ourselves on a park bench. Looking up to the sky, I felt great.

"Why were they picking on you?" he asked me but didn't turn his head towards my direction.  
I continued to watch the clouds go by as I replied, "Don't know."  
"Funny…"  
"I'm used to it, so it doesn't matter."  
It was then that he looked at me. "Yeah, me too."

I turned my head and slightly raised my eyebrows.  
"You too?"  
"Yup."  
"But you're a good player!" I blurted out, shocked.  
"You're a good player too, so don't be so surprised." He chuckled to himself as he got up. "Let's play together again, okay?"  
I nodded my head as he left with a lift of his hand to tell me goodbye.

I smiled as I looked at my green tennis ball. "He said I was good."

But I knew the difference in our levels. He was way past those jerks that pushed me around, and yet, he  
was so humble about it.

That day, I learned what "envy" meant. And, I regretted that I didn't ask for his name. The name of the opponent that I admired and wanted to defeat someday.

After two weeks, I happened to pass by some tennis courts and there was a tournament going on. Curious, I went and pushed through the crowd with my tennis racket hanging over my shoulder and diagonally across my small body.  
When I finally got to the fence, I blinked my eyes to find the boy I had played against. His brown hair was a little messed up and he bent his knees a bit, but when I looked at his hands, he was holding onto the racket with his right hand.

"Wasn't he using with his left hand when we were playing? What's going on here?" I mumbled to myself as I brought out a notebook that I had zipped into my bag. Once in a while, I jotted down some notes so that I could remember them for later use.

He was playing against that tall boy that picked on me.

"Isn't he the best player from that one group?" some teenage girl said as she looked at the tall bully.  
"I don't know…that boy he's playing against looks awfully familiar," her friend with the ponytail right next to her commented with eyes squinting trying to get a good look down at the boy with glasses.

"He's a prodigy," a man had said with critical eyes, stepping forward into the crowd. He looked important, but that was just my initial impression as I glanced at him. I found myself secretly cheering for the "prodigy" with my hands gripping onto the fence in anticipation.

"Is that Fuji Syusuke-san?" a teenage boy had asked.  
The first girl that I had first heard responded, "No no. Fuji-san's much cuter than _that_. Ooh…I know this boy's name…he's been on the paper's lately."

The papers? This boy was this famous and he was nice enough to play with me? I jotted that down so that I could do some research on that.

For some reason, even though I wasn't moved by many things, his words had more effect on me. And I felt honored at being able to play with him, especially when I felt that no one ever noticed someone like me unless it was to be picked on.

THWACK!  
The "prodigy" had won and he went to the middle of the court and stopped before the net dividing the court in half. He held out his left hand and the tall boy looked at him with vindictive eyes with a broken pride that he didn't know how to handle just yet.

"That's Tezuka Kunimitsu-san!" the girl with the ponytail exclaimed as she clapped her hands together. "He's so cool!"

But the only thing Tezuka-san did was briefly glance in my direction with a worn-out and indifferent expression on his face. He looked lonely and unhappy.

Then, he saw me again and we looked at one another.

He walked up the stairs and past the bleachers. Coming up to me while ignoring everyone around him, he asked with a tired smile and the nod of his head, "Want to play again?"  
"Sure!" I said as I followed him with the crowd wondering aloud who I was and how did I know someone like him.

We left the park and ended up getting ice cream. I didn't want to play him while he was exhausted, but when we were finished, he enthusiastically said, "Let's play again."

"But aren't you tired?" I asked while throwing the piece of paper left by the sugar cone.  
He shook his head. "I'd rather play with you than him."  
"You were _really_ good," I told him while we walked over to another set of courts in a quiet place far from other parks.  
"It's all meaningless," he replied.

From a kid like myself, I thought he was even more cool. But for him to say that, I could somehow see the look of disappointment at the previous match.

This time, though, under the underpass with the monorail trains passing by, Tezuka was playing with me very seriously. The person I had played last time was nothing compared to the person I played now. And it was then that I realized how good of a player he really was.

He stood there in front of me, positioned to react to my every move. His sweat was falling to the ground, but I was already tired. I fell to the ground as I missed the last ball he delivered to my court. When he came over to help me up, I kind of resented it, but took his hand anyway.

"You win again,' I announced with a sigh.  
"But this match was worth playing," he said with his eyes giving a glimpse of a warmth that seemed to be missing most of the time.

When we were about to go our separate ways, he asked, "What's your name?"  
"Inui. Sadaharu Inui."  
"I'm Tezuka Kunimitsu."

But I stood there for a moment longer and then inquired, "Why did you play against me even though you didn't know me?"

He told me, "Because you loved tennis. I thought you looked really cool when you said that."

Then, he walked away from me.

From that time on, I aspired to learn from him and to surpass it. I even got to play that tall kid again years later and beat him without him scoring one point.

I don't know why I thought about all this at this moment, but maybe I did. As people were huddling to watch Tezuka play in this junior high tournament, I stood close to the fence watching him while adjusting my glasses and a notebook open to take down his every move.

To learn what was beyond the data, I had to analyze it thoroughly.

And as I looked at him, the same feelings of jealousy and admiration came back over and over to me.  
When we grew older, I had asked him again why did he continue to challenge me when our tennis philosophies were so different and our levels were obviously none to be compared.

You know what he said to me? He told me this:

"I never thought you were ordinary, Inui. I wanted you to think beyond that. That's why I don't look at the data. It's not that I don't believe in it, but there are things that people can't ever see unless you play against an opponent."

I was honestly touched. All this time, I was trying to chase him to make him look my way only to find that he had considered me an equal. An opponent that challenged him not only on the tennis court, but his mind.

When he finished one set, he looked back at me and we briefly exchanged glances in that split second. He smirked as he began to bounce the ball in order to serve it even though he wasn't really using any of his true strength.

"Very amusing," I thought while watching him carefully. "You always surprise me."  
But with that smirk, I read, "I'd rather play against you at this moment."

I smiled while resuming to write in my notebook. I began my mental calculations and a plan of action to take him on…

So, after this match, I wondered what would we learn from each other today when we played one another?

Whatever it was, as always, we both looked forward to it.

**Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note: **Yes, it's true. I like this pairing. ^^;;; (But Tezuka x Fuji forever! Makes me think of Gravitation and how I like to mix and match…Ohohohoho!) But the hardest thing for me was to pick which perspective I would take with this. And even though I had no idea where it was going, I think it turned out all right. ^_^v

**July 10, 2004**


End file.
